Choosing one suite for the office

Walk into many small CA offices and you will find client files in three places. Some are in a partner's personal Gmail. Some are on one staff member's laptop. Some are in a WhatsApp chat with the client. The office calendar is a register on the front desk, and the due dates live in someone's head. Nothing is wrong with any single tool. The trouble is that the office has no single home.

This course fixes that. You will pick one suite, either Google or Microsoft, and set it up the same way for everyone. Then you will run email, calendar, files, letters, review, calls and team chat from it.

What a "suite" is

A suite is a set of tools from one company that share one login and work together. Both big suites have a free version you can start with today:

Each also has a paid business version: Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 Business. These add an email address on your own domain, shared drives (Google) or SharePoint team sites (Microsoft), where files belong to the firm instead of to one person (files a person keeps in their own Drive or OneDrive still sit under their account), an admin console, and more storage. We will not quote prices, because they change. Check the current plan on the official site when you are ready.

Why one suite, not two

• One place to look. A new article knows where every file is from day one.
• One login to protect. One account per person, with 2-step login, is far easier to secure than five.
• One switch-off. When someone leaves, you remove one account and their access is gone.
• Less training. Everyone learns one set of buttons.

You can still open the other suite's files. Google Sheets opens Excel files, and Word opens a Google Doc you download. One suite means one home, not a ban on everything else.

How to choose in one hour

Sit with your senior and answer these questions honestly. There is no wrong answer. Both suites can run a small CA office well.

1. What do most people already use? If six out of eight staff live in Gmail on their phones, Google will be easier to roll out.
2. How heavy is your Excel work? If you run large workings, macros or Power Query every day, you will keep desktop Excel. Microsoft fits that habit better. Google Sheets is fine for shared trackers and lighter sheets.
3. What do clients and banks send you? Mostly Word and Excel files? Mostly PDFs and WhatsApp photos? Both suites handle PDFs. Heavy Word and Excel traffic leans Microsoft.
4. What laptops and phones do you have? Older laptops and Android phones run the Google web tools well. Windows laptops with Office already installed lean Microsoft.
5. Who will set it up? Pick the suite your most confident person already knows. A tool nobody understands will not be used.

How this course works

There are thirteen short lessons. From the next lesson on, every lesson has two parts: On Google and On Microsoft. Read only the part for the suite you chose. Each part shows the free way first. Then a "Paid option" box explains what the business plan adds, so you can decide later if it is worth it.

Where a business plan includes built-in AI (Gemini in Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 Copilot), we mention it in a line, only as "if your plan includes it". How to use AI assistants well is in our course AI for Tax Professionals.